How To Relieve Lower Neck Pain

This video explains to the viewer how physical therapy treats patients with lower neck pain. The treatments used for patients and common causes of lower neck pain are described.

So, how to relieve lower neck pain? The main cause of lower neck pain is bad posture. A lot of office-based people who sit in front of their desks have very bad posture. Anything you do where your head is coming forward from your body.

On top of that, it puts strain on the lower part of your neck. That is the part where your upper back becomes your neck. It's a very immobile area and it doesn't move much.

To treat that with physical therapy, for example, if you come here, we do a lot of soft tissue treatment, so a nice deep massage around that area. It may be painful but it's important to get the tightness and stiffness out of that area. We also do mobilizations of the spine which means we use our hands and we mobilize the stiff joints and areas of the neck.

We're actually moving the vertebrae to loosen it up. The goal of the treatment is actually to increase the range and strengthen the weak muscles so posture is straighter and better. We also manipulate the neck, in common terms, called cracking of the spine.

It's very safe in that area and the whole purpose of manipulation is to free up the stiff joint. It's an easy thing to do as well. Another thing to relieve it is by stretching, forward stretching, side stretching.

But the most important thing is correcting your posture because lower neck pain is usually caused by bad posture. We want to push the head back on top of the shoulders to release the pressure of tension and muscles that are trying to keep your head up. Another thing I'd like to add for treating lower neck pain is strengthening the back muscles and neck muscles.